


The First Step

by aj_linguistik



Series: SAO Pride Week 2020 [5]
Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga), ソードアート・オンライン - 川原礫 | Sword Art Online - Kawahara Reki
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Asexual Character, Asexual Renly, Awkward Crush, Coffee Shops, Day 5, M/M, One Shot, SAO Prideweek 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25387993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aj_linguistik/pseuds/aj_linguistik
Summary: Submission for Day 5 of SAO Pride Week 2020- CrushRenly's new to the whole college finals thing, so on a whim, he's trying the coffee trick for his late night study sessions. As luck would have it, the barista is really cute. And it looks like he's not entirely unfamiliar, either.
Relationships: Renly Synthesis Twenty-Seven/Renly's Best Friend
Series: SAO Pride Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1838614
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10
Collections: SAO Pride Week 2020





	The First Step

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Renly and his best friend made it into one of my fics as the main ship for the first time shortly after his introduction episode aired. Renly is one of my all-time favorite SAO characters, and I'm loving writing him and seeing people's art and fics with him in them. I wanted something simple and cute, so have at it: coffee shop AU time!

College exams simply are not manageable when one doesn’t have a decent dose of caffeine in their system. As such, Renly considered himself no different than any other college student and figured he’d give the coffee thing a try. He had a lot to study for and it felt like such a short time to do it in. The thing was, he’d never really been a coffee person. He didn’t know the slightest about ordering coffee or what tasted best. He stared up at the doors to the world’s most famous coffee chain and swallowed his nerves.

It’s just coffee. It’s not a test.

He finally broke out of his daze and stepped forward to enter the shop. There was a fairly long line, which meant he time to gaze up at the menu and try to select the best option to try. It wasn’t that he’d never had coffee before, but he’d never bought it. It was something friends would offer him at their home or would be a cup his parents brewed that he partook of occasionally. All of the words up on the menu were foreign to him. Was it too much to just ask for a simple coffee? There were all these different things.

His eyes flashed between the menu and the people at the register. They were using words that sounded so unfamiliar to him; he’d not yet heard someone give a size. No, wait—they were saying something like “tall” and “venti” and the like. Were those sizes? Or were they flavors? It made his head swim. He just wanted some caffeine. Maybe he should have gone for a soda instead. It was chilly, though, and he wasn’t really a soda drinker. He wasn’t a fan of the carbonation. If the coffee tasted well enough, he’d rather do this than buy a soda from the machine.

With so many choices, he finally resorted to perhaps asking the barista for a suggestion. It couldn’t hurt to ask; asking never hurt anyone. The line wasn’t so long that it would cause a bother, either. He was still last in line. He must have come in at the tail end of a rush. Hopefully, his good luck would allow him a much slower decision. He nervously clasped his hands together as he approached the counter.

When his eyes lifted. His heart jumped into his mouth. A boy was standing behind the cashier, reaching up to grab something as he put together a drink with speed, ease, and a bit of a dramatic flair. The boy looked familiar. Renly swallowed. Could it be the cute guy from his math class that he was too scared to talk to? His pulse quickened.

“Sir? Are you ready?”

He snapped back to the cashier, almost yelping in surprise.

“I-I was wondering if you had a suggestion!” he squeaked. “I’m having trouble deciding what to choose…”

The cashier smiled and started rambling off a few of her favorite selections from the menu. He still wasn’t sure what to pick from those, but at least he was going to sound like he was making a more informed decision than he would have before he’d asked. He picked the easiest name of the bunch to say and threw in a chocolate chip cookie for good measure. Surely she wouldn’t know that he’d just winged his order.

“A name for the order?” the cashier asked.

He nodded.

“Uh, Renly,” he said. “R-E-N-L-Y. Renly.”

She scribbled down his name and then handed him his receipt.

“Your order should be ready soon,” she said. “Just wait over there by the bar.”

Nodding and mumbling his thanks, he stepped off to the side and watched the boy behind the counter as he worked. Whenever one of his coworkers spoke to him, he broke out into this cheesy, warm grin that made Renly’s heart skip a beat. He was full of energy and managed to make all of his coworkers laugh along with him whenever he said something funny or pretended to drop something. His demeanor was just as mischievous as he was in class—he was always interrupting the professor to say something goofy.

With the ease of months or perhaps years of practice, he whipped out a paper cup, filled it up with the right ingredients, mixed it when need be, and then slid the drink onto the counter, calling out a name as he did so. He made sure to make eye contact with every customer and give them a pleasant smile as he thanked them for their patronage. Renly got so lost in thought as he watched him that he jumped when the guy called out his own name and his drink order.

He dashed over to the counter and reached out to hurriedly take the cup and scurry out. As he grasped the cup, though, he hadn’t realized that he’d also touched the guy’s fingers. He hadn’t completely let go of the cup yet, and now their hands were touching. Renly felt his cheeks burning with embarrassment.

“I-I’m sorry!” he stammered.

His eyes wandered up to meet the boy’s. Of course, he was staring right at him, giving him the same warm smile that he gave all of his other customers. Renly swallowed. The guy’s eyes widened, and he raised his other hand, waving a finger at him. His brow knit together as if he were taking a lot of effort to think.

“Say, I know you,” he said. “Are you in Dr. Higa’s Introductory Trig course? The ten o’clock section?”

Renly stiffly nodded his.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’m in that class.”

The boy smiled at him even wider now.

“Ah, I thought so!” he said. “Your name and face seemed familiar. Oh, and your backpack has the cool ace flag buttons on it. I remember those, too!”

Awkwardly smiling, Renly touched a hand to the buttons on his backpack strap and nodded. He wasn’t sure what to say in this situation. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself and slip up by saying something weird. Even though he’d always thought this guy was cute, he’d never gone out of his way to talk to him.

“Getting a caffeine boost for finals?” he continued on, as if Renly hadn’t frozen at all.

Renly nodded.

“Yeah…I thought I’d give it a try,” he said, his voice quiet. “A friend said it might help with long study sessions.”

The boy gave him another cheesy, warm grin and handed him his drink.

“Of course!” he said. “My shift’s always around this time. You should totally stop in this time tomorrow for another! Let me know how that caffeine worked.”

All he could do was nod and take his cup. The words just weren’t coming to him right now. Maybe he’d be better at them tomorrow. With a thank you and a wave, the boy was back to filling orders in a flash. Renly took a last gaze at him as he turned to leave, clutching his drink tightly in hand. He told himself he’d be back for sure—even if he didn’t quite like the coffee.

The coffee he’d selected at random was a bit sweet for his taste. It wasn’t overall bad, he told himself, but he’d like to try something a little more bitter. It did the trick, though, just like Tiese had said it would. He was able to stay up well into the wee hours of the morning to get some notes taken and some major studying done. Another round would benefit him in two ways—a second chance at picking a coffee order he liked and a second chance at talking to the cute barista from his trigonometry course.

He planned his day out around that. He would go in about the same time to make sure he was able to run into him. Perhaps he’d go a bit earlier to explore the menu more. In the back of his head, he wanted to just ask the boy what _his_ go-to coffee was, but that would require him to speak to him outside of the coffee shop. Renly didn’t know where he could find him on a day that wasn’t the final exam for their shared class, so that was out of the question. He’d just have to wing it or look at a menu online.

Oh, right. A menu online.

Renly pulled up an online menu and looked through all of the options. He discovered the existence of “off-menu items,” which was a strange concept to him. Nothing among those looked very appealing, and he did have to use a search engine to define certain types of drinks and ingredients. Nevertheless, he was able to narrow down a selection before he walked into the coffee shop that afternoon. This time, he wouldn’t look like a fool at the counter when he was placing his order. He’d say what he wanted with a little more confidence than yesterday.

Drawing in a deep breath, Renly pushed his way into the shop again. This time, the line was much shorter. He didn’t know what made the rush different from day to day, but the baristas weren’t zooming around as much as they were on Monday. He glanced over behind the bar and found himself smiling. The boy was there, as promised. He felt his cheeks burn a bit as he thought about receiving another smile from him.

The line being only three people long, he made it to the counter fairly quickly. The cashier was the same girl as before. Her eyes widened slightly in recognition of him.

“Oh, hello again,” she said. “Would you like the same today?”

He was surprised.

“You remembered me?” he said.

She laughed.

“I remember your hair and that you asked me for some suggestions,” she said. “Do you dye it and braid it yourself?”

He scrunched up his shoulders shyly.

“N-no, I get it dyed at a salon,” he said. “I do braid it myself, but…”

He trailed off, realizing he wasn’t actually productively giving her his order. He yelped and changed gears to tell her what he’d decided to order today. She just giggled and typed in his order. He went to give her his name again, but she reassured him that she’d remembered that, too. Renly couldn’t help but to be impressed. She must have been really good at memorizing faces and names. Thousands of people must come through these doors a day.

“It was nice seeing you again,” she said. “I hope you’ll continue your patronage.”

He nodded his head.

_So long as the cute barista is here, it would seem I have no choice._

He was already blushing at the thought. He thanked her for her help and then stepped off of the side to watch from a distance again while he waited for his order. It wouldn’t be long; at least, it wouldn’t be as long as the previous day. There were only two people in front of him. The third was walking out of the door. Even still, the boy worked at maximum speed with such precision and accuracy that it was astonishing. Renly watched his hands as he expertly poured and stirred and shook the orders. He was lucky to realize that the next person’s order was a rather large one, and the other barista who’d been with him yesterday wasn’t here.

The feeling in his chest was difficult for him to understand. What was it about the boy that made his heart flutter? He knew that sometimes a pretty person would make him feel like this, but at some point along the way, he realized that his moment of fluttering at a cute person wasn’t associated with the same urges that other people experienced. When he’d described how he felt to his friend Tiese, she’d asked him if he was asexual.

The more he thought about it, the more confused he felt. Was there something else he was supposed to be feeling? Was he an incomplete puzzle because a piece had been dropped behind the desk and was sucked up by the vacuum during a careless pass? How long had it taken him to realize that he wasn’t broken? He didn’t know. Maybe sometimes, even though he’d come to terms with it and accepted it, he still didn’t know why he felt odd when he had a crush like this.

Was it a crush?

He shook his head. Of course, it was. The only difference was that he felt nothing sexual when having one. Luckily for him, the boy had complimented the ace pins on his bag strap. Tiese had given them to him when he’d officially come out to her. He did his best to wear them with pride, like she’d told him to. If the boy liked his pins, that meant he was supportive and understanding, right? He had nothing to be afraid of.

“Renly?”

Snapped out of his thoughts, Renly hurried over to the bar and offered a shy smile to the already-grinning boy offering him his drink order. This time, their fingers didn’t touch. He felt a little disappointed by that fact.

“You came back!” he said. “Got something different today, I see!”

Renly nodded.

“Y-yeah,” he stammered. “My order yesterday was a little sugary. I thought I’d try something more bitter…I was going to ask you what you liked…but I didn’t know where to find you…”

The boy’s eyebrows raised.

“Oh!” he said. “Well, why don’t I give you my number?”

Renly could feel his cheeks getting warmer. The boy’s hand was outstretched with a marker. Renly wasn’t the sort of person who would write on his arm, but it seems he had no choice in the matter. This barista was a man who made use of his on-hand materials. There would be no choosing an alternative here. So, he awkwardly held out his wrist for the boy to write on. He uncapped a marker pen that he probably used to write names on orders and carefully spelled out his name and jotted down his phone number. His handwriting was surprisingly neat.

“Yeah, if you want to, like, study together or ask about coffee orders, feel free to text me,” he said. “I’m not really good at the studying thing, though. Oh! If you like to play games, I have some cool new multiplayer games I can show you. Or play with you. You know.”

Laughing, Renly nodded.

“L-let’s get through finals first,” he said.

In the back of his head, he chided himself for reverting to the responsible student in front of a cute guy who’d just casually invited him to play video games with him. Now wasn’t the time to sound like someone’s parent. But his worry was unnecessary. The boy kept on talking, chuckling about Renly’s choice of response.

“Right, right,” he said. “But yeah, since that exam is Friday, I took Friday off. Maybe we can come in, grab some coffees at the end of my shift Thursday, and have an all-night study session!”

Renly smiled and nodded.

“That sounds great,” he said. “Should I…text you my number and my name?”

He nodded.

“Yeah, do that!” he said. “Boss’ll yell at me if I write on my arm again.”

Renly had to hold back a laugh over that.

“I’ll do that, then,” he said. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow. And I’ll text.”

The barista flashed him another brilliant grin.

“Alright! It’s a date!” he said.

Renly had to hide his blushing face as soon as he heard that. He nodded, returned the smile, and then slowly made his way out of the coffee shop as the boy’s boss called for him to come fill an order that had been placed while they’d been talking. As the door closed behind him, Renly held his sleeve away from the writing on his arm.

This was the first step.

“I can’t wait to get to know you,” he said, smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I'd also like to say this; I said at the beginning of the week that I wanted to slip all of myself into my fics for this year's pride week event. Day 1 was trans guy, Day 2 included bi Kirito, and now, Day 5 includes asexuality. It's not been very long since I came out as ace. But I wanted to include it, too. Thank you for reading!


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